


Forgotten Dances

by ThereIsOnlyZuul



Category: Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 18:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12259905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereIsOnlyZuul/pseuds/ThereIsOnlyZuul
Summary: Fi and Ghirahim were spirits torn apart by war. While Fi forgot who she was, Ghirahim remembers and seeks to bring back the forgotten dances of long ago eons. ONE-SHOT.





	Forgotten Dances

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slight AU reworking of who Fi and Ghirahim are and what they would become in Skyward Sword. Mostly because the original canon wasn't romantic and as the sappy, soft-hearted girl that I am, I couldn't accept that. Enter the one-shot story below. Enjoy :)

Ghirahim sat atop the walls of the Skyview Spring, hidden in the shadows of a towering tree. He was watching Hylia’s chosen hero jump across the pillars that rose above the crystal clear waters of the spring. The little mortal girl he was after to meet his prime objective had slipped through his fingers while he’d toyed with this so-called hero in the Skyview Temple.

Ghirahim had taken his own leave to follow her to her next destination as he sensed her presence fading. And yet he didn’t immediately depart to Eldin Volcano. Even though he could easily head her off at the pass and capture her long before she ever made it to the next purifying spring, Ghirahim had stayed close to Skyview Spring.

The boy was in possession of the Goddess Blade. He had Fi and Ghirahim wanted to see Fi, if only to see her dance for just a moment like he remembered. She was the reason he was doing any of this in the first place, after all.

Raising the Goddess Blade to the blue sky, the hero stood before the pedestal that held the Goddess’ instructions. Fi appeared to decipher them. Ghirahim’s spirit called out to Fi’s at the sight of her. It had been eons since he had last seen her.

Moving over the top of the water as graceful as a loftwing soared through the sky, Fi twirled and dipped and jumped and danced. She was as beautiful a dancer as she was before…

… before she had submitted to the Goddess.

… before she had been melded with the Goddess Blade. 

… before she had been taken away from him.

… before his lonely eons without her.

He watched her for the whole of her dance. Even when his eyes grew blurry and his being heavy and his memories of happier, better times threatened to erupt within him like Eldin Volcano, he watched her. As she turned back to light and slipped into the Goddess Blade once more, and the hero left the spring to head off to where he would next find the girl, Ghirahim stood under the tree in the dark shade and wished with all he was that Fi was still dancing. 

It was the only part of her original self that remained after the Goddess. 

Back before the Goddess and Demise and the definitive divide of light and dark, Ghirahim and Fi had been lovers. They were earth spirits: Fi of Light, Ghirahim of Dark. Polar opposites of each other, but that’s what had made the love affair so special. 

They’d spent their lives moving through the land and air and seas, no allegiance to the Golden Goddesses that had created them, but no qualms with them either. Everything was in balance and they had been happy and free to live their immortal lives as they pleased. And they were constantly pleased by dancing.

“One more dance?” Fi would ask no matter the situation. As rain began to fall or the sun set to night or ice and snow coated the land. Forever asking for one more dance. 

“Only one?” Ghirahim would smile. For he was forever granting her wishes and bending to her whims. And while she danced, the rain or the setting sun or the bitter cold never bothered him anyways. Let the eons pass too, for time meant nothing to him and Fi, especially when they were together.

But then during a mighty storm, the Golden Goddesses left, tearing through the sky like the lightning of the storm. Control over all the Goddesses had created was given to a lesser Goddess. 

Hylia. 

All of the land, all of its living beings, and all of the power of the Triforce were put in her care. But the odds had already been stacked against this goddess. She was strong, but she was not strong enough. The darkness that permeated the land did not fear Hylia as it had feared Din, Nayru, and Farore. 

The world became unbalanced.

An army was gathered. Dark and evil and toxic to all it touched. Ghirahim had felt it. Worse still, he had been intrigued by it. And just as he could feel the dark, Fi could feel the light. Hylia seemed to call to Fi. An intoxicating tune that Fi found hard to deny. 

She was drawn to the Light and he the Darkness, but they resisted to stay in each other’s arms.

Until…

Until the fissure opened and the dark army spilled out over the land like a plague, killing all that stood in their leader’s way. The Darkness took a name as it marched towards Hylia. It was to be called Demise, for anything that stood in its way would perish.

Ghirahim and Fi, the peaceful earth spirits, were peaceful no more. No longer were they in perfect balance to each other: they were enemies. 

How Ghirahim and Fi had struggled. They’d fought the light and the dark to stay together. Neither wanted day or night apart, they wanted dawn and dusk together. 

Ghirahim was able to resist, if only long enough to find his way to where he knew the Goddess and her followers were preparing for siege. Disguising himself as the wind he’d so often transformed himself into to move over the land, he moved throughout the Goddess’ army of Light to find Fi.

But he was too late to find the Fi he knew. The Goddess and found her first. Of all those that had been drawn to the Goddess, Fi was the most powerful. She could be used. For what in war was ever left untouched?

Hylia had turned Fi into the spirit that would reside inside her chosen hero’s sword. Everything Fi had ever been had been stripped away. Everything but her Light. And her dance. And the Light was but a weapon, the dance but a code. She wasn’t what Ghirahim loved anymore.

It made him furious. 

How dare the Goddess left to protect the beings that surround her use them for this! How dare she make monsters as vile as the ones Demise had crafted under the surface!

His anger revealed him to the army of Light. The wind he’d transformed into turned to crackling lightning and blazing fire and heart stopping cold before the Goddess had commanded he reveal his true form.

The pure Light recoiled as he slumped to the ground, forced to reveal himself and kneel by the Goddess’ immense will.

“Why are you here?” Hylia had demanded. Her angelic voice, once so beautiful, was frightful.

“I have come for the Spirit of Light.” Ghirahim replied weakly. The will of the Goddess was suffocating. 

“Your army of Dark cannot have the Light!”

“I have no army–”

“Silence!”

“No!” Ghirahim shouted, his strength returned by the force of his anger. “I am here for Fi! You will return her to the way she was!”

He should not have been surprised that the Goddess had little interest in even humouring him. The glow around her grew brighter, purer, as the power coursing through her piqued with her own righteous anger. “Return to the shadows, vile creature of the Dark!”

The Light became blinding. And for so long. Ghirahim thought the Goddess had killed him, that he’d been returned to Din and Nayru and Farore. But the Light did fade. And all at once. 

He was alone. Transported unharmed, but for his pride, to Faron Woods. The Goddess had spared him. Perhaps she’d sensed he had not joined the Darkness, and that he was simply made of it. But that did little to change what she’d done to Fi. Was he to thank her for sparing his life when she’d destroyed the only thing that made his life anything to begin with? 

If the Goddess would not, possibly could not, release Fi from her forced servitude to the army of Light, Ghirahim would find someone who could. And there was but one entity that had the power to do it.

Demise.

Ghirahim closed his eyes. It was time to stop struggling against the Dark. It was time to embrace it. Because it would save his love. He’d make it, one way or another.

Dropping the defences he’d walled around himself, he let the Darkness call to him like Fi had let the Light. He did not begrudge Fi for going more willingly into the Light than he did the Dark. Who wanted the cold fright of night when they could have the dazzling brilliance of a blue sky? But the lure had been there and he let it lead him straight to Demise.

The land surrounding the Dark army was scorched and sour. The monsters that made up the fighting grunt ranks had stripped the land of everything: trees for their fires, animals for their food, ores for their weapons. Demise destroyed all in his path, ruling through fear and blood. But his thirst for the power of the Triforce made him stupid.

And Ghirahim had always been smart.

“The Spirit of Dark has finally succumb to my will?” The hulking lord of monsters had laughed as Ghirahim appeared before him. Ghirahim was another victory, and how Demise loved to gloat over his victories. 

But Ghirahim wasn’t a victory. Demise was his.

“I am not here to pledge myself to you because I have to.”

That made Demise’s large ears perk. “You will submit–”

“I won’t,” Ghirahim returned with a smirk. He thought he’d have to pretend to be casual in the face of the Demon Lord, but he actually was. The pure blackness of his surroundings were bringing out what had been in him all along. 

But his love for Fi was still there too. That would not be forgotten, not even in the thickest vat of evil you could drop him in.

“I’ve come to make a deal, Demise.”

“You dare to make a deal with the Demon Lord?”

“Yes. And I advise you to take it. I am a powerful spirit. As was my better half, Fi. She has already become the blade of the Goddess, to be wielded by her chosen hero. You have no hope of defeating that sword without one of your own. Which would be me. But as you can see, I’m still free as a loftwing. Your will might be Dark, but it isn’t as Dark as me.”

That may or may not have been a boldfaced lie, but Demise was buying it. Ghirahim could see all his thoughts playing out on his shark like face.

“What is your deal, Spirit of the Dark?” 

“I will join your cause as your spirit sword to help you take over the world and seize the power of the Triforce from the Goddess for several conditions.”

“What?”

Ghirahim took a steadying breath. He thought back to Fi and how she wasn’t her anymore. He couldn’t have that happen to himself. “I want to remember.”

“Remember?”

“Yes. This. My past. Everything that will happen. I want to remember it. I want to still be what I am.”

“Granted.”

“I also want to remain a spirit. I will carry the sword inside myself, not the other way around.”

“Granted.”

“And–”

“You test my patience, Spirit!”

“And,” Ghirahim continued, ignoring the monster that stood before him as best he could. “I want you to spare the Goddess’ sword spirit after the Light’s defeat. With the power of the Triforce, I want you to put her back the way she was. I want you to leave her untouched after that.”

“You would have me leave the Spirit of Light unchecked in my conquered land?” Demise roared. “Do you take me for a fool?”

“I will remain your sword spirit afterwards and for all time. I will keep her in check.”

“Why?” Demise asked more quietly than his brutish form suggested he could get. He seemed to be trying to figure out what Ghirahim was getting at, staring him down with his glowing red eyes. 

“No questions. Take the offer or leave it.” 

As scared of Demise as Ghirahim should have been, he wasn’t scared. Not at all. The Demon Lord would take the deal. The only thing he wanted was power and control. Ghirahim would give it to him and then he would give Ghirahim the Fi he’d known before. 

“I will take it, Spirit.”

And that had been that. Ghirahim’s spirit had been melded with ore and he’d become a sword spirit as well. But Demise kept his promises. When Demise wasn’t using Ghirahim’s once-benign-now-corrupt power to hack his way across the land, Ghirahim was still himself in body and mind. And when Demise fell to the Goddess? Well, it was unexpected, but Ghirahim was still himself then too. 

Fi’s spirit completely disappeared after the Light’s victory. She’d been put to sleep within the sword and taken somewhere far away. But she would awake again when the time called for it. When war was once more declared for the power of the Triforce.

So lonely eons passed as Ghirahim traversed the land, looking for a way to incite a war. A whole war to start just for the spirit of the one thing he loved most in the world. Perhaps the eons alone had warped Ghirahim, because he could do and would do worse than a war to reclaim Fi. He just didn’t know how.

Then, just on the verge of going mad from the loneliness, the opportunity Ghirahim had been waiting for presented itself loud and clear. Hylia was back. He could feel her on the wind. After all these years, the Goddess had returned.

The next step was easy. He brought her to the surface. Her chosen hero had followed, the Goddess Blade in his scabbard. He’d started his second war.

The little mortal hero had gotten in a few lucky swings in Skyview Temple. Ghirahim had been distracted by the sight of his long lost lover. But Ghirahim would not be distracted like that the next time they met. 

Steeling himself, Ghirahim moved further into the shadows of the forest that overlooked the Skyview Spring. Like a sentimental fool he had wasted time wishing that Fi was still dancing. But he didn’t need to wish.

He needed to win.

Forgotten dances would not cloud his vision or halt his intent. Not when there would be new dances to come so soon in the future.


End file.
